Help with food managment

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Lynncat

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I just had a kitty diagnosed with Diabetes. The vet decided to start by just using the dry DM food. I've paid out $100 for 2 bags of it thinking all my 4 kitties would have to be on it for this to work, and in checking your site and others I'm seeing that I made a big mistake. Now, where do I go from here, I have not started with insulin yet so how do I feel all 4 canned food and do I have to treat the one differently?
Thanks so much
Lynn
 
(((Welcome, Lynn)))
Experienced folks will come by to answer all your feline nutrution questions, but I can say that all cats can be on the same diet - you don't have to stress about feeding differently. Secondly.. the food you bought at the Vet - please return it (even if opened) depending on your Vet - you can either get a refund or a credit on your account for any future visits. I am sure they will offer one or the other (mine gave a credit on my account).
If they wont, please contact Purina -

Feline Diabetes Health/Food Articles
 
Thank you, after reading for the past couple hours, I had decided to do that, at least the one bag, I bought two. I'm left angry that a company who pretends to care about my pets health is making such crap food and selling it for so much and that none of the vets I've seen seem to have a good enough handle on this. But I shouldn't be surprised, I've had to make decisions for my own health care despite the drs.
Now, It looks to me as if making my own food is the best option if possible. We travel some times of the year and it would be much harder. So, how do I put out food so that Baby gets what she needs when she needs it?
 
As Nicole said, you should be able to return that food and get a refund.

The idea is to feed a diabetic kitty a low carb moisture laden diet, thus, canned food :)

Low carb obviously because of the diabetes and believe it or not, moisture laden is good for any kitty, diabetic or not. Diabetics are more prone to a few things that the dehydration dry food brings on so the more moisture you can get in them the better. and no, i know what you are thinking, just put out a bigger bowl of water right? LOL!! kitty can't ever drink enough to make up for the moisture dry food robs them of.

sooooooooooooooo, you should read about feline nutrition at http://www.catinfo.org as that is a very very well respected website done actually by a vet. my vet actually had a consult with her recently because she wanted Dr. Lisa Pierson's expertise about nutrition.

and, now is a great time to make a diet change before starting insulin as putting kitty on a low carb diet can and often does drop BG (blood glucose) levels quite a bit. in a perfect world the diet change would be enough and you'd never have to start insulin :)

and yes, the diabetic diet is fine for the other kitties too. I would need to grow 30 arms and sets of eyes to keep an eye on all my cats and make sure the diabetic didn't get into diabetic UNfriendly food so i feed all of mine the same low carb diet as my diabetic gets. we don't need to make this dance any harder than it is :)
 
Thank you. What I was actually wondering is how much food to set out or have frozen in bowls, so that I know Baby gets what she needs and doesn't get eaten up by everyone else. But I guess I'll get it figured out.
 
well, what i did is a little "odd" i think but i don't have children and i like my privacy so we don't have a lot of visitors here at the house to criticize me :) but what i did is i started feeding my diabetic on the kitchen table.

at the time of her diagnosis the other cats in the house were elderly/sick so none of them did too much jumping so i didn't have to worry about them eating Mousie's food. and that has worked. she knows right where to go when she needs food.

would something like that be doable at your house?
 
Actually my sick one is the oldest. She is about 17. The rest jump much better. However, I have decided just to feed them all the same. I'm worried about just doing a quick change for Baby, so I have started with canned because I had that, and put some dry into the mix. Does that sound good?
I'm going to investigate a raw food diet, and will probably end up with a mixture as we will be traveling a good bit. My more immediate problem is that we have just moved. Actually we are in process, I'm in the new house in Az and hubby is finishing up with his job and finishing up with cleaning up the old house in Ca. In approx a month I have to fly there and help drive everything back here, and what to do with my kitties on canned food is a big problem. I had planned on leaving out plenty of dry food and extra litter boxes as I have done in the past but that won't work here.
I am so grateful for this forum, thank you everyone for a welcome and for all the important info I received here.
 
As for how much food to put out, well it really depends and some days they will eat more than normal and others maybe less.

Also, unregulated diabetics tend to eat more as they can't utilize the food properly and need more in order to get the needed nutrients.

All that being said, here is what I do:

I have three cats

Twice a day I put out:

1 - 5.5 ounce can of friskies special diet
anywhere from 1/4 - 1/3 can (13 ounce) of EVO 95%
1-2 medallions of nature variety

I add water to all of it I take the friskie can fill it and split among the three bowls.

Now, I find there are days when all bowls are empty, days when only the friskies is eaten, etc. If I'm home, I'll adjust during day if I see they are eating, but otherwise, this plan seems to be working well for them - they're not starving (ok they say they are!)

I also give treats - cooked chicken, freeze dried chicken, etc. and one cat (Buster) MUST share my meals, no matter what it is.

So, I suggest that you put out what you think makes sense for an 8 hour period and see how it's eaten or not. Then adjust accordingly.

hope that helps :-D
 
Thank you. I took the dry away last night. Boy were they hungry this morning. They insisted I get up and feed them. I have a friend who already feeds a raw diet and she got a lot of info for me from her store. I have a feed store here that might have some food I can use. Another suggestion was that I have the market grind my chicken including bone and that sounded good to me.
 
I have 4 indoor cats, 1 of them is a 25 lb maine coon. Throughout a 24 hour period I find that these guys eat between 27 and 33 oz's of canned food. That is between 5 and 6, 5.5 oz cans of food.
 
Just an update. I took the food back, the girl at the desk was not happy and made sure I knew that, but she took it. I offered the print out of links for the vet but she was not only horrified that I had found my information on the internet, but was possitive the vets would not want or need that information. So?
I started them with 2 cans twice a day and they transitioned over to canned with no problems at all.
After a few days I picked up raw chicken and put some out without the canned at first for the morning feeding and 3 of the 4 scarfed it down, the 4th took one sniff and walked off. I then put out just one can and all was well. The next morning I gave the one can and the raw at the same time and all 4 dug in. Now, they are starting to ignore the canned and go for the raw, so I think I'm ready to get a grinder and make my own. It will for sure save me money, just canned will cost me $60 a month and they sure seem to love it. Baby seems better, the vet has never called, never set up a second visit altho she said she wanted to do weekly? Monthly testing. I'm thinking maybe that is not the vet for me. Baby's urine output in the litter box is much much less now and she seems to feel great, they all, including Baby are more energetic and it seems like they have trimmed down some too.
Thanks everyone for all the wonderful information! It was a life saver.
 
I'm just dotting the 'i' and crossing the 't', Lynn, but please be sure your homemade food has all the necessary supplements. Sure wish mine liked raw, you're lucky!
 
the initial cost of feeding raw is high. gotta buy all the supplements plus the grinder. but much cheaper in the long run.
I use dr. Lisa's formula and my guys transitioned just fine. they still love canned which I give on rare occasions but all but one loves it. I have to mix canned with raw. had a few do well on it and then start to throw up so I just started over by mixing canned with raw til their tummies could handle 100% raw.
dr lisa site for recipe and good info on feeding
http://www.catinfo.org/

this is the grinder dr. L recommends also. I think a few on here use a different one. also this grinder is sold elsewhere and a bit cheaper but it is really not the same as the one form this site according to dr L.

http://www.onestopjerkyshop.com/tasin-t ... -p-47.html

Good luck and keep us updated
 
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